What forest? What trees?

Headless horsemen, sort of

Two thoughts here. Rode again in the monthly Critical Mass ride on November 24, the day after Thanksgiving. About 20 people showed up. That's not many for a ride that often has 200 participants. Those of us there looked around and wondered where all the others were. One guy let us know that plenty of people showed up the Friday after Thanksgiving last year. We waited and waited and the guy who always has food to hand out (apparently he picks up the throwaway stuff at Trader Joe's) asked everyone if they knew of anyone else who was coming. Finally we gave up on waiting and this small group hit the streets.

A few days later I met Rod Beckstrom, co-author of The Starfish and the Spider, which is subtitled, "The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations." It wasn't until that moment that I realized that Critical Mass is a leaderless organization. I haven't read the book yet but Rod told me about the extended analogy in the book which is that when you cut off a starfish's leg, it grows a new one. And if you cut off all 5 legs, a new starfish grows from each of those 5 cuts. And this happens because the starfish does not have a central nervous system. It does not have a head; it does not have a leader.

And that's who we are, a bunch of bicyclists without a leader. And so the ride happens every month, whether 200 show up or only 2. (Which I'm guessing is how many show up the last Friday in February. Brrrrr!) But we were 20, which isn't many, certainly not enough to stop traffic as the larger group can do. So we took off, but because there were so few people, everyone was in fact a leader. The unwritten rule of the ride is that the person in front determines which way the whole group will go.

Given the small number of people, I found myself becoming more active in the ride. Usually I stay in the middle somewhere, just following along with the crowd, enjoying the joie de vivre and energy of the people around me, but this week I did peel off at one intersection and placed my body and bike in front of cars at a green light. No one helped out, however. But the other 19 did proceed through the red light. So, I'd done my piece. I'd contributed to the ride. I was content.

And our small and leaderless group pedalled into the evening, eventually making our way to Cambridge where everyone gave up near Harvard Square and went their separate ways.

With a little help from my friends

Steve Shapiro, who I interviewed for the Cool Friends section of tompeters.com asked me to speak to the New England National Speakers Association, for which he is President Elect. I spoke about my work with Tom Peters, what we do to extend the brand via his books and pamphlets and his blog. It was the first time I had spoken to a group about my work like that and I think it went quite well. People enjoyed my presentation and I think they learned a couple of things. Then Steve went ahead and put together a list of the main points of my talk, at least from his perspective, and I have to agree with him. His summation will be my beginning point for the next talk like this. Thanks, Steve.

The Pipe

The Pipe, originally uploaded by erikorama.

I was working with a colleague the other day and she pointed out to me this character on the keyboard. It's called "the pipe." And it makes a vertical bar in your document or on your web page. I didn't even know this key existed! The Pipe. What a great name for a character. Now that I know it exists, I see it in action everywhere, even on TV, some ad giving information used the pipe to separate phone number and address. My great discovery of the week. Here's what Wikepedia has to say.
Another friend points out that the pipe is cental to the butt crack image using keyboard characters: (_|_)
When I asked if this was how plumbers signed their emails, she said they use this: (_|_)f
[that's a pipe wrench]

Guess what? It IS your fault!

I had mentioned in a post a while back that I was thinking about that phrase, "It's not my fault." The worst thing anyone in the world can say, as far as I'm concerned. And I wasn't sure where I was going with this until William Swanson, CEO of Raytheon came along. He is the guy who's not getting as much press coverage for his plagiarism as is Kaavya Viswanathan, the young Harvard student accused of plagiarizing in her chick-lit book. (Note: I just read in today's NYTimes that her publisher, LIttle, Brown, will not now re-issue her book with revisions to those plagiarized parts. It won't be published at all.)

According to an article by David Leonhardt in today's NYTimes, the writer notes that Mr. Swanson--unlike Ms Viswanathan--had never apologized for his transgression. Mr. Leonhardt writes:

I pointed this out to Raytheon's top spokeswoman this week, and last night she called me to read a new statement from Mr. Swanson. This time, he did apologize — twice — and he blamed a staff member for the problem. [Note: this new statement does not appear at the Raytheon website.]

In 2001, Mr. Swanson gave the staff member a file of material to help prepare a presentation, and the file included Mr. King's book, according to the statement. Mr. Swanson didn't realize that so much of the finished product came from the book, rather than his own notes.

This may well be true, but it certainly isn't consistent with Mr. Swanson's previous boasts about how he came up with the rules. In the book, he wrote that they had come from advice from others and his own thoughts. In any event, he has failed his own integrity test. " 'Integrity,' to me," he writes, "is having the fortitude to do what is right when no one is watching."

So, yeah, when things start to go bad and people start pointing out inconsistencies in your story, blame the assistant! It works every time. How can you take this guy Swanson seriously anymore? He gives this un-named assistant a pile of notes (including the copied-from book by W.J. King) and then is surprised--surprised!--to learn that so many of his own--his own!--lessons came from this book. Baaaad assistant. It's not Mr. Swanson's fault. His name may be on this collection of "Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management," but apparently that doesn't require him to actually concern himself with where they came from. Oh well.

But why? Why blame the assistant? Why doesn't Mr. Swanson just own up to the fact that he made a mistake? He asked someone to do a job he should have done himself. If he didn't have the time to put together his own rules, he shouldn't have been handing out this collection with his name on it.

Well, you say, so many books are not written by the person whose name is on the cover, anyway. I know that. I used to work in the ghostwriting business and I'm aware of how many books are not written by the listed author. (That's one reason I'm a close reader of acknowledgments, since that is where the author or authors are revealed, at least if the "author" has any shame whatsoever. )

But if Swanson had actually written his own notes and had any familiarity with the W.J. King book and if he had bothered to read his own finished product, wouldn't he have wondered where all of his own material had gone?

It's not his fault, I guess. His name is on it, but it's not his fault that it's comprised mostly of someone else's words. I've got to wonder about all those Raytheon employees today who are held to those corporate values and how they feel about the fact that their CEO, their leader, doesn't have to comply with them. How many other people are going to be saying today, when something goes wrong, "It's not my fault."

"What's the secret?"

Last night Todd Sattersten dragged me over to 20 x 2. Here's the blurb from the schedule of events:

Tambaleo (302 Bowie St)
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Here's tonight's recipe for fun. Take twenty designers, writers, musicians and bon vivants. Give each two minutes and the same question to answer, and turn them loose before a live audience. That's the equation for 20x2, which celebrates its sixth SXSW. Join us as participants answer the question "What's the Secret?"

I know it said two minutes, but this video of Jory des Jardins answering the question runs a little longer than that.

27.2 million (and counting) ways to screw around at work

The most depressing line from the Blogs to Riches story in this week's New York magazine is from David Hauslaib of Jossip.com: "You gotta have something posted before people get to work," he explains, "because my audience is people who hate their work." Who's got time to hate their work? But I suppose it is true. Dilbert is still very popular after all. I was just hoping—naively, obviously—that people were more connected to their work.

In my work with Tom Peters we're trying to spread the message of bringing passion to work and doing work that matters. Our viewpoint is that any job can be turned into a great job. Or at least an opportunity to launch into something else better. But to be at work and hate what you're doing seems such a huge waste of time and talent and energy. Oh well. Here's hoping for better.